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@Grant Barkertried removing all the usb cables and plugged them in different sockets - no difference. afaik all drivers are up to date - thought windows 10 was good at that now or is there some way of updating otherwise? note: use geforce experience to update my graphics card. is there some other way of checking? device manager ??

originally noticed when i force quit something and thought it was odd the cpu was mazing out.

@Rich C when i reinstalled windows, before installing anything else (av, chrome, firefox etc) i checked the cpu usage and sure enough it was 100%

i just tested removing the network cable (i.e. removing internet access) to see if ti made any difference and it's still 100%. all. the. time wonder whether it would make any difference doing a clean reinstall, wiping the drive first and then reinstalling windows??

takes so long to reinstall starcraft, overwatch, fortnite, creative cloud, then setup sublime and ruby etc

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wonder whether it would make any difference doing a clean reinstall, wiping the drive first and then reinstalling windows??

I assumed that you had done a clean reinstall. I guess not. I only ever do a clean reinstall to be honest, unless trying the latest version before the ISO is made available. You can manually and cleanly install the latest Windows 10 from tomorrow. (You can also install a `lean' version of Windows 10 now, too.)

A few questions or thoughts come to mind..
Does it feel slow? Can you check the CPU temp to see how hard it's working? Is it old? Maybe it has been maxed out for ages and you never noticed for any obvious reason? When you play the usual games, do they play OK? Are any fans spinning like crazy to keep it cool (faster than usual for this time of year)? Did they seem slower in safe mode, etc.

GeForce Experience seems the way to go to update the GPU. However, sometimes there can be various issues with updating the GPU driver. Fortunately, we can uninstall and reinstall back dated drivers, especially if the issue arose around the time of a driver update.

While you are up in the air, I'd do a clean Windows 10 install when the latest Windows 10 is made available for manual install tomorrow, sometime (April 30). See the bottom of this post. That way, you can guarantee that it wipes out any unwanted bits and pieces. At least that step will be another tick off the list of troubleshooting.

If that seems like too much work, try uninstalling the GeForce driver and replace it with an older one.

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hmm just did a sull scan with avira - it finished and found a few instances of HTML/exp kit.gen2(trojan?!) and JS locky (ransomware ?) and then computer froze before i could do anything like moving them into quarantine.

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Lol. Really? A full system scan should be near the beginning of all of these types of investigations, I think.
(eg. Press F3 on this computer maintenance page and search for `full system security scan'. I just made it red and bold now.)

If you can do a full system scan with a decent software (like the trial of Bitdefender) then it should hopefully remove the infected files. Try to remove all infections on your drives before reinstalling Windows. Or disconnect other drives and cleanly wipe the C drive and reinstall Windows and then install a decent security software before connecting back your other drives. Just to prevent you re-infecting a new install of Windows.

Upon a clean Windows install, the first thing I'd do (before connecting other drives) when going online is install the Bitdefender trial. We all have different ideas about these things, but Bitdefender is probably the best free security software, and the paid version arguably the best paid software. YouTube

I only mention Bitdefender again because if you do have an issue that Malwarebytes, Zemana and Hitman failed to find, then Bitdefender is a better option for you, and does better in tests.

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(It's good to remember to deactivate or sign out of paid apps like Adobe, Malwarebytes, etc. before a reinstall.)

(On the subject of security software, Bitdefender has a trial for 30 days, and then in the last couple of days they knock the price way down from $80 to $20. image)

You could try installing the trial and see if it finds and removes any infected files. If it does, and the CPU problem gets fixed, then you can forget reinstalling Windows for now, if you don't want to.

Any suspicious files can always be uploaded to VirusTotal to find out if they are a known risk.

2 cents

Edited April 30 by Grant Barker

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yeah but it takes so long to do a full scan i did half intend reinstalling windows anyway but yeah should have started with a scan will do a scan and then look at options from there like disconnecting other drive, wiping ssd then clean install and check again... thanks

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2.5 hours into bit defender scan (89% progress, resolved items 97, unresolved items 0) and thought i would try out another resource monitor. from the screen shot it seems not to be 100% (windows task manager shows cpu 100% same as before ) obviously there is some cpu usage because bitdefender is scanning;)

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hmm couple of years ago downloaded a backup from a friend's server when their site went down and now bit defender finished it found
Generic.JS.DownloaderK.ED71C137
and JS.TeslaCrypt.2.Gen for example 97 instances all in the same backup folder- removed them in bitdefender and deleted the rest of that folder.

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That's a long scan! It's good that it's cleaning things up for you, though.

I was surprised to see that the Windows 10 April 2018 Update was available and downloading via Windows Update. Most people thought that it wouldn't do that until around May 8th. There are some nice changes I've noticed so far.
I'll do a clean install in a couple of days. I'm going back to bed.. it's 3:30am here, but I have a few days off and wanted to update my site!
Glad you are cleaning up your system. 👍

You can also try the resource monitor CAM. (I added it to my Tools for Windows page.)

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everything ok - found another virus, but this time it was flu, in me april update done and so far no problems. well ok still 100% in task manager but not in any other cpu monitor. guess bios might be worth a look at somepoint, maybe one of the previous windows updates meant my cpu activity was being misread by windows. thanks anyway for the help